A gay jingle-jangle, the concord of sleigh-bells, the muffled piaffering
of horses' hoofs and the door-knocker went again rat-tat.... Voices
sounded in the hall, Rutherford and Robert Leffingwell entered the room,
Jack's tête-à-tête was interrupted.
“Good-bye, Miss Adgate,” said Jack, abruptly. He cast a scowl of dislike
at the jovial face of Rutherford. Before Ruth could make reply Jack was
out the front door, and his friend had a glimpse of a pair of boyish
legs leaping the offset.
“Splendid way of getting rid of obstacles,” Rutherford said as he
followed Miss Adgate's eyes, “but what an odd boy it is! We're in for
a blizzard, Miss Adgate,” added he, and he approached the fire and
cheerfully rubbed his hands.
“A Blizzard!” cried Ruth. She ran to the window, followed by her two
guests.
For a moment Ruth and the two young men watched the flakes descend....
They seemed to fall, fall, from limitless Niagaras of snow, from regions
without the world, whose fountain-heads, beyond the skies, might be
situate in those wastes of storm and cloud, where a Teutonic Mythology
places its gods. The trees swayed gently, but even as Ruth watched them
they had begun to bend in torture under a furious gale. Clouds of snow
rose and fell like the billows of the sea....
The temperature capriciously dropped to far below zero. Had not Jobias
been prepared for this by previous knowledge, the house might have
become uninhabitable. But Jobias knew his business and stood by the
furnace. All that day and evening he watched it, fed it;--and left his
post from time to time only to replenish with fresh baskets of logs the
voracious fireplaces in the drawing-rooms, casting above the baskets of
wood a paternal smile, an indulgent glance upon those idle ones gathered
round the flames.
Sledges, meantime, drove up. Guests departed, guests arrived, unruffled
by stress of weather. All, rather, were most obviously exhilarated by
it. Ruth's friends were in the maddest spirits. Punch flowed, quips,
cranks, peals of laughter made the house resound. The Blizzard
adding, at it always does, a fresh elixir, more oxygen to the already
supercharged New England atmosphere, Ruth, too, felt unaccountably
elated. Her eyes sparkled while the winds howled and hooted, and bullied
and tore; the unassuaged tempers of five thousand demons seemed about to
take their fill of hate upon an innocent, well-meaning world, but a
rosy colour bloomed in Miss Adgate's usually pale cheeks. She had never
appeared to such advantage; she had never looked so lovely, appeared so
brilliant, nor been so amusing. Rutherford, as though the storm had
gone to his head, Rutherford watching her covertly, vowed he could throw
himself at her feet before the roomful, and Ruth's intuitions warned
her; she had a feminine inkling of danger. She chatted and she laughed
from her corner by the table laden with excellent things to eat; but
she kept Rutherford at arm's length the while her fancy began to draw
a picture of Pontycroft, standing it beside Rutherford. For the first
time, she perceived that General Adgate recalled Pontycroft in
a measure. Tall, thin, spare, his aquiline features were like
Pontycroft's, his bearing was that of a distinguished man. “He has
Harry Pontycroft's air of knowing that he knows,” reflected Ruth
softly; tenderly to her soul she quoted a line Pontycroft long ago had
ironically applied to himself:
“He who Knows that he Knows, follow him.”
Pontycroft loved to discourse for the pleasure of holding forth. General
Aldgate was reticent. His voice was low, well modulated; one could not
have helped listening to it, or to what he said; even though this had
not been wise or witty if often touched with irony.
Rutherford, of medium stature, had the neck of a bull. His skin,
originally clear, was yet ensanguined by exposure to wind and weather;
he liked an out-of-door life and since he was heir to a fortune and
detested the counting house, his life went in hunting, shooting, and
fishing. He had a shock of black hair, clear black eyes, rather an
attractive habit of darting a keen glance at his interlocutor as he
spoke--a glance that seemed to grasp all there was to see, hidden or
upon the surface, in a flash. But his voice was nasal, his words rushed,
spluttered to be free; they issued chopped in two and left the idea
unformulated. It required some familiarity with the American vernacular
to understand him.
“And he, a college man!” scoffed Miss Adgate.
But at that instant--while Ruth indulged, I grieve to acknowledge it,
the spirit of mockery--a thunderous crash broke the unison of lively
voices. The score of people in the rooms flew to the windows. There,
tossed to earth, abased from glory, prone upon the ground--imploring
boughs lifted to heaven, a wreck--there lay the monster Adgate elm, one
of the hoary elms in the carriage sweep. It lay there as neatly cut as
with a scimitar. The splendid tree was literally slashed in twain by the
Blizzard's invisible weapon, the prostrate thing loomed, portentous, to
twenty pairs of eyes.
With the rest, Ruth stared at the fallen King. There was a lump in her
throat.... No one spoke.... Every man and woman in the room had waxed
intimate with that old tree, had come to man's or woman's estate beside
it; they had played under it, insensibly had come to love it, as a part
of themselves, as a piece of their pleasant, happy lives. This comrade
and landmark was, too, one of the pardonable vanities of Oldbridge.
“Praise Heaven it wasn't the roof,” said, at length, the Master of
Barracks Hill. He knew, though, he would have preferred to have it
the roof. A roof may be replaced. His niece even, did not suspect the
passion of attachment any plant or tree upon his land could stir in him
upon occasion.
X
Perseveringly the snowflakes descended. They continued to fall, fall,
fall, for another thirty-six hours. The wind next morning, though, had
stopped, and debris of yesterday's storm had been removed. A trackless
white garment of snow spread to the furthest reaches of Barracks Hill.
“This is all very weird,” said Ruth to Miranda, as, side by side, they
sat and gazed on leagues and leagues of the white silence. “Miranda,
this is all very well--Blizzards are very stirring; simple homely
pleasures are very pleasing, this landscape is _very beautiful_,
but,-----” Ruth suppressed a yawn.
“Besides, why will young men make geese of themselves? One can't
get away from him, Miranda; a Blizzard even, does not keep him away!
Miranda! If there's an object, my dear kitten, I detest, it's a
sentimental young man.”
“Uncle,” said Ruth, nonchalantly, to General Adgate that evening after
supper, as, with Miranda purring snugly beside her, the three
sat together in the drawing-room, “I have an invitation from the
Bolingbrokes, in Washington. They want me to come to them for a visit.
Would you--would you miss me very much?” she coaxed, and she went to him
and laid a caressing hand on the old man's cheek--“would you mind, very
much, if I were to accept?”
“Mind, my dear?” General Adgate looked at her. “Who am I to say mind?
You are your own mistress. Miss you? That's another pair of sleeves.”
“But suppose I bring them back with me,--I mean the Bolingbrokes,”
laughed she. “They're such dears.... You'd fall in love with her, the
sauciest sprite in Christendom. And he'll welcome the occasion to talk
international Politics with you! I believe,” Ruth teased,--she drew up
the Empire settle before the fire, she took Miranda to her knees and sat
down again; “I believe that it's my Duty--to go--to go fetch them--to
play with you.” With a final nod of decision Miss Adgate placed
two small, elaborately shod feet, in a pair of high-heeled,
steel-embroidered Florentine shoes, upon the fender; she began, with
equal decision, to remove the wrappers from _The Athenoum, The Saturday
Review_ and a couple of _Morning Posts_.
“Go--my dear,” said the old man gently.
“Dear me! I feel like a brute,” thought Miss Adgate. “What will he do if
I return to England? Oh, why will people get fond of people!”
Miranda purred.... The fire responded; a crisp, little musical
crepitation; the flames licked the wood, the logs consumed themselves,
in a cadenced song of happy Death and blessed Eternity. Punctured
by this music silence entered, cozily, warmly descended upon the New
England drawing-room.